COVID-19 cases and deaths continue to decrease worldwide, says WHO

United Nations: The number of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to decline globally, the World Health Organisation has said, noting that both the case and death incidence have reduced for the past two months in the South-East Asian region. The COVID-19 Weekly Epidemiological Update, released this week, said over 3.3 million new cases and over 55,000 new deaths were reported around the world during the week of 20-26 September, 2021, a decrease of 10 percent as compared to the previous week for both cases and deaths. Globally, the numbers of weekly COVID-19 cases and deaths continued to decline, it said. The largest decrease in new weekly cases was reported from the Eastern Mediterranean Region (17 percent), followed by the Western Pacific Region (15 percent), the Region of the Americas (14 percent), the African Region (12 percent) and the South-East Asia Region (10 percent); while weekly cases in the European Region were similar to the previous week. The number of new weekly deaths reported showed an over 15 percent decline for all regions except for the European Region and the African Region. The largest decline in weekly deaths was reported from the Western Pacific Region, with a 24 percent decline as compared to the previous week. Globally, the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases now stand at over 231 million and the cumulative number of deaths is more than 4.7 million. Around the world, cases of the Alpha variant have been reported in 193 countries, territories or areas, while 142 countries have reported cases of the Beta variant and 96 countries have reported cases of the Gamma variant. The Delta variant has been reported in 187 countries, across all six WHO regions as of September 28. The WHO update said that the highest numbers of new cases were reported from the US (765,827 new cases; 31 percent decrease), Brazil (247,397 new cases; 135 percent increase due to changes in reporting), the United Kingdom (230,494 new cases; 14 percent increase), India (204,582 new cases; similar to previous week), and Turkey (192,778 new cases; similar to previous week), while the highest numbers of new deaths were from the US (14,842 new deaths, a 17 percent decrease), Russia (5,469 new deaths, similar to the previous week), Mexico (3,689 new deaths, a 13 percent increase), Brazil (3,727 new deaths, a 10 percent increase), and Iran (2,967 new deaths, a 23 percent decrease) respectively. In the South-East Asian Region, both case and death incidence have declined for the past two months. In the past week, over 344,000 new cases and 5,200 new deaths were reported, decreases of 10 percent and 20 percent respectively as compared to the previous week. This week, the highest numbers of new cases were reported from India (204,582 new cases; 14.8 new cases per 100,000; similar to last week’s figures), Thailand (85,143 new cases; 122.0 new cases per 100,000; a 10 per cent decrease), and Indonesia (17,250 new cases; 6.3 new cases per 100,000; a 26 percent decrease). Seven of the 10 countries in the South-East Asian Region reported a decline in weekly deaths, with notable decreases reported from Nepal (by 38 percent) and Indonesia (by 37 percent). Bhutan did not report any new deaths. The highest numbers of new deaths were reported from India (2,080 new deaths), Indonesia (999 new deaths) and Thailand (905 new deaths), it said.